


Continuing the Cycle

by Phantom_Feline



Series: Repeating Cycles and the Strings of Fate [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: AU, Age Regression/De-Aging, Animagus, Dark Magic, Deception, Flashbacks, Gen, I don't know where yet just assume that it's AU at some point in the future, I'm playing in this sandbox now, Identity Issues, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Legilimency, Mindscapes, Mistaken Identity, Moral Ambiguity, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Rape/Non-con, Recovery, Snakes, Soul Magic, long fic, ngl Harry's probably going to need a whole Redemption Arc, pretty much a character study at this point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13529427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_Feline/pseuds/Phantom_Feline
Summary: Harry learned the Prophecy and decided he would do everything, ANYTHING, to kill Voldemort before the Dark Lord could kill anyone else he loved.Dark Magic probably wasn't the best choice, but it lead to. This. Among other things. (Worse things, no, stop, don't THINK IT.)A new world, one without magic. That wasn't to say there wasn't power at all; oh, no, it was everywhere! There were also the people who used it, the ninja, and the snakes that insisted on calling him 'Lord' (and, oh, did that feel right...) Now, if only the Konoha ninja would just STOP saying that he was related to someone named 'Orochimaru'...





	1. Prologue; The End

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This story is the edited (oh dear god, EDITED) version of my baaaby, that is posted over on FFN under the same title. If you've read it over there: Hi guys! Enjoy the much better version that will be going up :3 If you haven't read it on FFN: Oh please, for the love of whatever god(s) you may or may not believe in, DO NOT go read it over there. Please. My style has changed a lot since I started posting it back in '11, and at this point I cannot even LOOK at it without wanting to scream.
> 
> Which is why this is being posted. I am editing it, so that I can read my own damn fic again, so I can FINALLY write up the new chapters. Because I love this story, and as I told my lovely, rabid, desperate reviewers over on FFN, if it takes me literally DECADES, I will finish this one.
> 
> So, that ramble is out of the way. This is the prologue, hopefully my edits continue smoothly and chapter one goes up soon, but I don't have an update schedule... So enter at your own risk, lovelies~

(Series; Repeating Cycles and the Strings of Fate)

Prologue; The End 

 

It amazed him, in the vague, dissociated way everything did now, that he could remember some things with such _clarity_ , while other things just drifted away… Harry blamed Voldemort. It was easier that way, because the only other option was blaming himself. Or blaming everyone else. After everything he’d gone through, it would have just been better if he couldn’t remember anything at _all_.

Almost two years ago to the day –or so he had been told, but Harry didn’t _(couldn’t)_ let him believe a word out of the Dark Lord’s mouth– had been the disastrous expedition into the bowels of the Ministry, to the Department of Mysteries, accompanied only by and unprepared gaggle of DA members. The day he dragged _school children_ , so unlike himself and so woefully _uninformed_ , into an under-thought rescue mission when he knew – _he knew!_ – that the Dark Lord would be waiting.

Two years ago. The day he lost his Godfather to the Veil. The day he had first been possessed by Voldemort. The day he confirmed _–though maybe, maybe…he had already somehow known–_ that the Dark Lord shared space in his mind, a dark corner that nothing he did could cleanse.

Two years ago. The day he heard the Prophecy that had sentenced his parents to death before he was even born; the Prophecy that hung the same sentence over his own head. The day he finally learned _why_ _Voldemort wanted him dead_.

Dumbledore, Harry recalled murkily, had been so surprised when Harry hadn’t yelled at him _(he had been so angry when the old man hadn’t let him escape, had locked him in that room instead of letting him mourn in peace and solitude)_ ; that he had stared at the headmaster, furious beyond words, and the door behind him had cracked and splintered and _shattered_. Had been so surprised that he’d only called Harry’s name once he was already halfway down the stairs, and Harry didn’t stop.

No one had bothered Harry, then. His…friends _(he shouldn’t have taken them, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place)_ , recovered from their wounds and kept their distance, but Harry’s guilt was a muted thing, pushed away more easily than it should have been. Voldemort’s return was confirmed by the Daily Prophet, and the other students watched him from a cautious distance, but very few tried to ask him anything about it after the first few. _(They were unnerved by the darkness in his eyes.)_

There were more important things to concern himself with. Like hell was he going to go down without a fight. He owed it to Sirius, if no one else.

He spent the summer with his relatives more isolated than he ever had before, in self-inflicted solitude as he struggled through his previous year’s books, reviewing everything that he had been too _stupid_ to learn. It didn’t come easy, but knowledge was power, and he couldn’t afford to be weak anymore.

When he came back from summer break to start his sixth year, he had resolve that had never been there before. He also made enemies of his entire House the very first night, when he turned over his Quidditch Captain’s badge to McGonogall and quit the team. They were all _children_ , they didn’t _understand_. He loved to fly, almost more than he loved anything…but there wasn’t any time left for games. There wasn’t enough _time_. Harry could hear the seconds of the death clock over his head ticking away, and he needed to be _stronger_ , strong enough to kill rather than be killed.

They whole school knew he’d left the team by breakfast, of course, and once more he was the focus of unwanted attention. Ron had been _livid_ , but their reactions had only hardened Harry’s resolution, reaffirmed that he’d made the right decision. Harry would protect his friends, even if that meant that they would no longer consider him one; they were safer the farther away from him they were. He just got the people he loved killed. _They didn’t need to know about the Prophecy._

He started a routine, one that lasted the rest of the year, and nothing and no one could stop it. As soon as his last class let out, Harry went to the Room of Requirement, and his request was always the same: _“I need training. I need to get strong, skilled, and_ fast _. No one can stop me; no one can find me. Whatever it takes—give me_ everything. _”_

Hogwarts complied. She gave him _everything_. Harry would kill the Dark Lord, or he would die trying (and take down as many Death Eaters as he could in the crossfire). The nearly sentient Castle didn’t care for legality, either, because Magic was Magic, and what the Ministry ruled as “Dark” meant nothing to her. Power was power. _(And if Harry recalled Voldemort’s words from his first year, then, he brushed them aside quickly enough.)_

Almost from the very beginning, Harry stopped leaving the Room for anything but the bare minimum of classes, and that was only to keep the professors from having him suspended. He needed all the time he could get to train. Homework was given barely any attention, if he remembered to do it at all, and sleep became…optional. It was something to dread. Not only was it a waste of his valuable, _limited_ time… But every time he slept, he was assaulted by dreams of torture and murder. Voldemort was doing it on purpose; Harry could _feel_ it, the way the visions had only become worse since the Ministry, despite his desperate attempts at Occlumency. It wasn’t simply baring witness that made the dreams so bad: When he slept, he _was_ Voldemort, he felt the… creature’s _(he couldn’t be a man anymore, right?)_ emotions, the joy, twisted with sadistic pleasure, as he tortured and slaughtered more and more people…

So no, Harry didn't sleep much.

The Room took care of him, made sure he ate and got to his morning classes. She also offered _suggestions_ on what he should learn next, most often by dropping a heavy tome on his head with no warning (but that trained situational awareness, too, even if it revealed the Castle’s dubious sense of humor). Once, as he struggled his way through a journal of advanced dark magic theory, she gave him a book on rituals.

Harry thanked the room in a voice that cracked from disuse, rubbing a sore spot on his arm where the hard cover had clipped him as he dodged, and opened the tome to a bookmarked page; a ritual that had to be performed on the night of the Winter Solstice. Not so coincidentally, that very night. The Room shifted around him even as he read, picking slowly through the antiquated wording on a ritual that would… “rejoin Himself with His naturale Magick”, making learning easier and cast spells more effective. Hogwarts hadn’t led him wrong so far, and the ritual _did_ seem to be exactly the kind of help he needed, so Harry went ahead and performed the ritual. It was almost offensively easy to do, and practically impossible to mess up.

He hadn’t understood until it was already done and irreversible, just _why_ the ritual was classified as a Forbidden Art.

Even then, though, before his mind had been opened and torn asunder, could he remember everything about that night. From the very beginning, the ritual imprinted in pieces. The room, hazy with fragrant smoke, moonbeams piercing silver through the changed, open ceiling. A hot sting across his throat as he drew his blood with a clear-quartz blade, hand steady and guided by the invoked magic. Crimson swirling into an obsidian bowl, magic and moonlight giving it an eerily beautiful glow. The taste of blood and power on his lips, repugnant and sweet and addictive; liquid weight heavy in his stomach, burning. His skin tingling and hair standing on end, and it was like he could _feel everything_.

He'd tested, of course he had, and his spells _had_ preformed better, with less effort.

And when, in the next few days, he'd found himself quicker than usual to anger and his thoughts more vindictive, he'd attributed it to lack of sleep…or bleed-over from Voldemort. It was only after he’d been pulled into another vision and realized that something was _wrong_ did he think to go back to the ritual book and check on the possibility of side-effects. It was the only thing he could think of that could have caused… _this_.

Voldemort had been unaccountably vicious on this occasion; it stood out as the first time Harry had ever seen an Inferius. The night was an extraordinarily brutal, bloody, horribly slaughter of an entire extended family, including two children too young to speak and a bedridden grandmother. And, as always, Harry felt Voldemort’s emotions as if they were his own.

When he woke, though, he knew something had been different. Something had been _wrong_. His throat didn't ache from screaming, as it usually did after a vision. He wasn't sweating, and his eyes were dry. He didn't feel sick, either. The only proof that it all hadn’t been a horrible, vivid nightmare was a small track of blood oozing from his scar and running into his eye.

At the time, he remembered pushing the idea of _wrongness_ away as quickly as he could, tired and still so resolved. That it would be better, in the end, if he wasn’t so affected by things like that anyway. _(Not when he was learning to throw curses that were just as bad.)_

The Room continued to supply him with books that contained spells that he knew were forbidden. Illegal. Magic that would get him a one way trip to Azkaban, no questions asked. Hogwarts gave him targets to practice on; animated dummies for aiming, and small animals _(rats, he always requested **rats** )_ for the spells that required living victims. Harry didn’t care. The Death Eaters wouldn’t hold back, so neither would he. They wanted to kill him and his friends. They _wouldn’t_. They would have to go through _him_ , first.

Not long after that, a thin, handwritten journal on the Animagus transformation quietly appeared in his lap. Using the guided method of meditation contained therein to discover his inner animal was easier than he’d expected it to be, after the tales Sirius had told him about the years it took the Marauders to learn.

He was…conflicted, about what he found. Stunned, definitely, but also strangely content and comforted alongside the reflexive terror. Pride, too, at the sight of the great yellow eyes that had once dogged his nightmares. No one could ever know about this form. If it ever became known to the Wizarding World that their “Savior” was a Basilisk, they would declare him the next Dark Lord before Voldemort had even fallen. _(“Fickle fools,” the monster in his head snarled.)_

_(When he could think about it, Harry almost understood what had happened. What the ritual had done to him. Sirius had told him that being the Grim in Azkaban had shaded his thoughts towards ‘dog-ish’. The ritual had bridged his mindsets, bleeding the instincts of a magical superpredator into his human mind, and vice versa. It could have been worse. If he’d been anything less cold-blooded, he might not have lived this long.)_

As he became more aware of the ebb and flow of his own magic, wandless magic became just another part of his training. It relied on power, but even more, _belief_ that he could, and Harry _needed_. He was aware that he wasn’t imposing, physically; that he was stunted and malnourished and sleep deprived, even if he was fast. Harry _needed_ this one thing, this element of surprise, _anything_ to lessen the huge gap of experience between he and Voldemort, because otherwise…

All-in-all, his sixth year passed in a blur of desperate training, almost nothing remembered from his actual classes, barely a word spoken to his classmates—and _those_ usually flat refusals to rejoin the Quidditch team. He scraped through his classes on practical work alone, and even then suspected that it was Dumbledore’s meddling that got him passed into the next year. _(The old man looked guilty. Why?)_

He remembered vividly that the train ride back to King's Cross Station was silent, bitingly so. His friendships had suffered when he'd refused to allow them to become involved in his training; Hermione especially so, because for _some reason_ none of the old DA could find the Room of Requirement anymore.

The Dursleys didn’t antagonize him that summer. Harry didn’t give them a chance to; he was already _pissed_ that he had to be wasting time here instead of at Hogwarts. Call it a preemptive strike to save their sorry skins: When they’d arrived outside Number Four, and Vernon felt safe enough to start his usual, red-faced rant, Harry turned towards his Uncle with a small, sharp grin and cast a wandless silencing spell over him. As Vernon’s color edged towards purple, Harry calmly explained –still wearing his dangerous smile– that he knew how to work around the wards now; he was untraceable. He would be in his room, don’t bother him, thank you _very_ much. Petunia let him pass, white faced and silent.

He’d studied the least useless of the books that he’d broken out of the Restricted Section, and mentally prepared himself for his first and most difficult, eventual, animagus transformation. It still seemed like an eternity of wasted time until the Order arrived to take him away from his relatives. When they _did_ finally come to collect him –two days before his seventeenth birthday, and if it had taken any longer he would have left on his own–, Harry left his childhood home for the last time. He’d only looked back long enough to watch their faces as he discreetly, wandlessly, gave Vernon a pig’s tail, and smiled grimly as he was portkeyed to Headquarters. Sirius’ old home.

The night of his seventeenth birthday, Harry fell asleep and slaughtered the Dursleys in their neat, perfectly _normal_ home, and felt nothing but euphoria. When the Dark Lord laughed over their mutilated corpses, he wasn’t alone, and _he must have felt it_ , because for the first time in a year Harry could feel the separation at the edges. The act of killing the last of his blood relatives had probably been meant to spur Harry into making a rash move out of revenge, but no, no, it took everything he had to keep the ‘thank you’ tucked behind his teeth.

_Voldemort knew anyway, he had to know, he knew, he knew…_

He continued his studies at 12 Grimmauld Place; still difficult, still against his nature, but necessary. Since he was an adult in the Wizarding World, he was also able to exercise his right to use magic by locking meddling Order members out of his room. The Black Library was a treasure trove of interesting spells that not even Hogwarts could give him. He slogged through the hoarded knowledge, and one particular little spell caught his eye, and Harry _knew_ right down to his core. He re-read it so many times that it may as well have been seared into his brain.

The return trip on the Hogwarts Express was spent completely alone, locked in a warded compartment. He wasn’t safe. A second year Hufflepuff had grabbed his arm on the platform and he had nearly _flayed_ them, he hadn’t slept in days and he _wasn’t safe for **them**_.

He’d easily slipped away from the crowd after the carriage ride, already having decided to avoid the staring that was inevitable if he went to the Welcoming Feast, but instead of going straight for the Room of Requirement, he went to the Chamber of Secrets. It only seemed right. This was the night he would perform the animagus transformation, after all. At over sixty feet long with hypnotically patterned emerald and Avada green scales and a full black crest, he knew he made an intimidating sight. Including his killer yellow eyes, multitude of long, sharp fangs, and deadly-toxic venom…he was the stuff of nightmares. And still, he was proud; _this_ was his reflection. _This_ was useful, strong.

Even so, his studies continued. He learned spells alongside theory, base transfiguration and then forbidden Sumerian invocations. Healings that could regrow a heart if you were fast and strong enough, followed immediately by a curse to rot a man from the inside-out. Hogwarts gave him _everything_.

By mid-September Harry knew Voldemort was going to act soon; there had been _no_ attacks since the Dursley slaughter in July. _(Harry still couldn't help the creepy little smile that snuck onto his face when he thought about it.)_ It hadn't reassured him any that he had only been feeling anticipation coming from Voldemort's end of their connection…

It was just bad luck that Ron and Hermione caught him outside of the Room early one Saturday morning and dragged him down to Hogsmeade. Harry let them, because they were still his friends, and he missed them desperately even if he wanted to keep them _safe_ more…

_(He wonders sometimes how many times in these past months that they blamed themselves for what happened…)_

The only warning the other students got before the Death Eaters swept in was Harry, clutching his scar and stumbling into a wall, groaning in acute agony. Then the screaming started –and he still _remembered_ this, feeling vaguely thankful that it was still early, that only the older students were out, and still not as many as there could have been– and Harry retaliated, snapping his wand out and casting spell after brutal spell into the skull-masked attackers. His hard work paid off –the sheer violence and blatant _illegality_ of the magic had them hesitating–, and Harry cut a bloody swath through the Death Eaters harassing the students… Up until he was cut down from behind. _(And Voldemort told him, later, that it was friendly fire, another_ student _, and Harry_ believed _.)_

He’d taken a violent cutting curse to the back, could feel the burning agony from shoulder to hip, feel the hot wash of blood suddenly soaking his robes, and heard more screams before his skull suddenly and abruptly felt like it would _crack in half_ from the pain in his scar.

Voldemort found him, and the look in his odd, snakelike eyes was _interested_ , so radically different from the hatred that’d lit them in the Atrium, last. He’d easily pulled Harry to his feet, ignoring the way he had stumbled and cursed and vomited from pain and hate and abrupt movement—and then they were gone, the tight pressure of apparation and his last sight was of the Dark Mark glowing bright over Hogsmeade.

His perception of time became…fractured, after. Harry knew he was forgetting things, so many things. But the last, clearest memory, was of Voldemort’s unnerving interest as he’d snapped Harry’s wand, the almost-physical pain he felt as the Dark Lord burned the holly and phoenix feather shards to a small pile of white ash.

After. After, came the dark, and cold. Silence. _Absolute silence_.

It must have been a small cell; he remembered pacing before he became too weak. Only once did he despair over having such a large animagus form, because the room was too small, and it was completely useless. He didn’t let himself think about it after that.

There was no way to tell how much time had passed in the darkness. It was. Broken. Sometimes he could recall being pinned to the floor and having a potion forced down his throat; by then he’d been too weak to fight back physically _(and his wandless magic was only for Voldemort, a deadly surprise, he had to wait and he remembered that much.)_ They could’ve been making him drink poison and he would never know, but at least once it had been a nutrient potion; just enough to keep him alive, and nothing more.

When exhaustion dragged him unconscious, the visions would begin again, Voldemort _sharing_ his triumphs. The impassive slaughter of every muggle in the neighborhood –just to get to Hermione’s parents– was tame compared to the tortures inflicted upon the active members of the Order, or any of Dumbledore’s supporters. One of the Dark Lord’s favored methods was to summon venomous snakes and have them bite his prisoners, inflicting hours of agonizing paid, just to cure them and repeat the process again. Again and again, sometimes for days.

But things changed once more, and Harry was moved from the dark. He passed out in his cell, and the next time he woke it was to a new nightmare; a situation far, _far_ worse than being tied to a gravestone and used for a ritual. He wasn’t wearing the filthy, torn clothes he’d been captured in, but the cheap, threadbare grays of an Azkaban inmate, though he wasn’t in Azkaban. No, Harry woke to find himself shackled to the floor beside the Dark Lord’s throne.

Outside of the dark hold of a cell they’d kept him, Harry could track the time a little more easily. Voldemort called a Meeting like clockwork, every third day: Every third day Harry sat passively at the Dark Lord’s feet as the Death Eaters leered at him, reporting the steady, inexorable fall of the Light. They seemed to think it was funny, that Voldemort so often had his snake, Nagini, wrap herself around the “Chosen One”. They certainly lost any amusement when – _finally_ – Harry hissed at her to attack Wormtail, and, so used to obeying one Parselmouth, she _had_. The vicious smile he’d worn as his parent’s traitor screamed in agony, succumbing to a painful death, hadn’t been missed.

 _(In hindsight, it had been a stupid thing to do,_ rash _, even if it had been immensely satisfying. Wormtail was finally dead, and Harry would have liked to think that literally_ any _cost would have been acceptable for that. It wasn’t. Voldemort’s even more intense focus and increased fascination with him weren’t worth it. The man-snake-_ creature _would hiss little things at him, things he would never respond to, tried not to listen to, and he was always_ touching _him. Face, hands, hair, back; as starved for contact he was, Harry would have preferred the Cruciatus Curse…)_

At some point, someone let it slip: He had spent the greater part of six months in that dark little hellhole. Huh.

/-/-/

Harry blinked slowly as he came back to himself, pulling reluctant awareness back from the peaceful nothing he so often drifted in; it was the only sign to any observer that he was aware of his surroundings again. He listened halfheartedly as Voldemort organized his ranks for the final, hostile takeover of the Ministry. Harry wasn’t surprised that the creature was finally making his move to take over their part of the world: If the things he saw in his visions were an accurate reflection of how things were, then the Wizarding World was out of hope. Their Savior had been gone for eight months, now.

Harry made a small noise of pain as he was pulled up off the cold, stone floor; his cramped and weakened limbs protested the sudden, unaccustomed use, and he fell back against the too-tall form of Lord Voldemort. There were a few reproachful jeers aimed at him from the Death Eaters, but he felt the Dark Lord laugh quietly to himself and wrap one of his arms around Harry, holding him up and tight to his chest.

Harry felt his mind retreat some, going dim so that it was easier to ignore Voldemort’s hold, staring blankly ahead at the mass of skull-masked figures as they let out a cheer, presumably at the Dark Lord’s rallying speech. The sudden squeezing sensation of apparation forcefully snapped him back into painful coherence in time to notice a multitude of _cracks!_ as the Death Eaters followed their leader into the Atrium.

_(Ah, Interim Minister Malfoy must have lowered the wards…)_

The smooth, dark wood of the floor was warmer on his bare feet than the stone of Voldemort's throne room had been. Interestingly enough, the room was still and quiet; the fireplaces along the walls weren't burning. The expected screaming as the Dark Lord suddenly appeared in their midst wasn't there…

Someone gasped.

Harry felt Voldemort hold him more possessively as what appeared to be all of Dumbledore's Order –and some of Harry's DA members, if he saw correctly– stood firm between them and deeper entrance to the Ministry. Harry watched them with dry eyes and no expression; they looked absolutely floored to see him. They thought he had been killed, long ago, probably as soon as he’d been captured at Hogsmeade. _(He blamed them, oh, he blamed them. Why hadn’t they rescued him? **Why?** )_

They stared at him for the longest time, until shock turned into disgust as Voldemort ran his spindly fingers through Harry's lank hair—he felt the creature's amusement through their connection. He didn't bother trying to pull away. He knew he was too weak to stand alone, anyway.

Harry found Dumbledore's blue eyes –for once not twinkling– and simply blinked tiredly at the old man. Why was he here? Didn't the Headmaster recognize the hopelessness of the battle he was about to fight? Harry sighed, slumping weakly in the possessive hold he was trapped in, and the hollow sound seemed to echo in the eerie silence.

Voldemort must have taken that as a cue to start talking; Harry didn't bother listening, instead focusing all of his energy into staying upright. At some point a pale, long-fingered hand grasped his chin and moved his head, as if Harry himself were the one looking around; Harry supposed Voldemort was gloating over his "defeat" of the Boy-Who-Lived.

He must have finally struck a nerve somewhere, for one moment all was still and the next there were spells flying everywhere. No one was attacking Voldemort, though, not even Dumbledore. Not head on. The Dark Lord was using Harry as a shield _(the cunning bastard; no one on the Light side would attack their Savior…)_.

A definitive turn in the battle came at last, by the way of Severus Snape, and even if Harry never _liked_ the man, he had to at least admire his abilities. The Potion’s Master attacked Voldemort from behind his own lines, among his own people—and he distracted the Dark Lord enough to make him release Harry.

Harry saw the best opportunity he would ever get, and pulled forth the incantation that he had buried so deeply in his mind, safe from Voldemort—the spell from the Black Library. A spell so utterly repugnant that it no doubt would have been punishable by nothing short of the Dementor’s Kiss, if anyone else knew of it. But here was the thing: Harry was sure that _no one_ else knew of the spell, a feeling so persistent he had no choice but to _believe_. He trusted it, though. Maybe because after he’d memorized the spell, the book had disappeared from his hands as if it had never been..?

It was for the best. It wasn’t the sort of magic that _should_ be known.

The spell, done correctly, was supposed to rip the magic out of the target’s very _soul_ , adding it to the caster’s own. If the spell failed…it killed both caster and target in the backlash. Now that he _remembered_ it, Harry didn’t care either way—it would be _over_.

As he whispered the incantation, tongue twisting over almost-familiar syllables, Harry felt the pulse and sting of magic gathering in his hands, and knew. This was it. Just as Voldemort was turning back to him, Snape dispatched, Harry struck out and grabbed either side of the pale face in his charged hands. He watched, intent and _vicious_ as the red eyes shifted from surprise to blinding agony.

The Dark Lord _screamed_ , high and inhuman, and the room suddenly went breathlessly still, teetering on the hard-sharp edge of anticipation.

Harry’s eyes stayed locked onto the agonized, serpentine eyes of the Dark Lord, and he was too empty to even feel the satisfaction that he should have. His fingers dug into the _creature’s_ face, and he didn’t let go, even as he felt a rush of power burn through him and his vision blurred from the terrible, agonizing ripping sensation in his chest.

The Dark Lord Voldemort fell dead at his feet, and Harry staggered and fell not a moment later. He was panting, gasping for air he couldn’t get, caught between physical exhaustion and the sensation of the older, twisted magic meshing with his own. It hurt, it _hurt!_

Someone shouted his name –… _Hermione?_ – and suddenly the Atrium exploded into chaos again, spellfire and fleeing Death Eaters blocking him off from any allies. He was too weakened to move from where he fell, next to the –was it _dissolving?_ – corpse of the former Dark Lord. His eyelids felt weighted down, and Harry couldn’t open them again, not even to see _whose_ cruel, bony hands had latched onto his painfully thin arms, _who_ was dragging him across the smooth floor.

The noise quieted abruptly, and Harry was sure now that they were heading deeper into the depths of the Ministry. With a sudden surge of vertigo, he realized that his newest abductor had levitated him. They kept moving, and the person wasn’t careful with him as they sprinted towards their destination, and his head hit _hard_ —

Harry regained consciousness as he was dropped onto what felt like cold, shattered flagstones. A hot trickle of blood snaked down his face, but his entire body hurt, had been hurting for a long time now, and such a small wound was hard to pinpoint…

Then Harry heard whispering, and it wasn't from the person who had brought him here. No, he could hear _them_ pacing some feet away, their footsteps echoing loudly. No, he hadn't heard whispering like this since—

Harry managed to open his eyes long enough to confirm that, yes, he was in the Department of Mysteries again. In the Death Chamber. That he was lying, helpless, only a couple of feet from the Veil. The very same Veil his godfather had been thrown into almost exactly two years ago, by his cousin Bellatrix LeStrange.

The loud clicks of high-heeled boots on stone came closer to his head, and, irony of ironies, Bellatrix LeStrange began screeching nearly incoherently at him. That he would pay for what he’d done. That she’d kill him the same way that she’d killed her weak, shameful, muggle-loving blood-traitor of a cousin. But Harry couldn’t make himself care. He’d stopped planning to live beyond the “Final Battle” since he had been captured; he’d just wanted Voldemort _dead_. And he _was_ , dead for good, and Harry made sure of it.

The feeling of vertigo came again, and then suddenly it felt like he was being slowly immersed in something icy-cold and viscous. The whispers grew in volume until it was like his head was full of deafening static; he forced his eyes open and saw, through the translucent material of the Veil, Bellatrix _(just as crazy looking as ever)_ right in front of him.

Harry flung out a hand and snarled the Killing Curse, every bit of hate he could muster going into the spell, just as a group of Order members –Dumbledore, too spry for such an old man, at the lead– ran into the Chamber. Bellatrix fell to the ground, dead, from the flash of sickly green light.

The world fell around him, and in a far corner of his mind Harry realized that the Veil was being destroyed.

 


	2. 1: A Few (minor) Changes

Chapter 1: A Few (minor) Changes…

The sensation was like the reverse of apparation; instead of feeling squeezed through a tube he was being ripped in every direction at once, and it was only stubborn willpower – _magic_ – that kept him together at all. Then it changed, twisted, and he was being forced halfway into his animagus form before he wrenched back control of that, too. It could have been an eternity, or just a few seconds, struggling through warring energies, but Harry _knew_ that he almost hadn’t made it.

_(Made it where? What..?)_

And then suddenly, it stopped. He was lying down, twisted onto his side, on soft ground _(not stone or wood)_ , inhaling warm, dry air. He heard leaves rustling quietly over his head, and far away, birdsong. Harry opened his eyes, and there was _green_ as far as he could see; long grass and young trees and tangled, supple vines.

Something was… _wrong_?

He exhaled slowly and concentrated, eyes falling closed again, and managed to summon enough energy to groan quietly, nearly pained, and mutter a nearly silent _“What the hell?”_. No matter how hard he tried, nothing changed, and Harry felt the unwanted headache building. He knew what was wrong, why everything _felt_ wrong.

There was no ambient magic, wherever he was. Nothing. It shouldn’t have even been possible… But then again, _what else was new?_

The concept of ambient magic wasn’t something that Harry had focused on when he was training; most of the time it was only something to be tapped into in conjunction with warding, and rarely as a crutch to lean on for the exhausted or magically weak. Still, he was aware, to a degree. Everyone was; it was one of those things that you didn’t _really_ notice until it was gone. Like electricity running through a muggle home—you didn’t _really_ hear the white-noise static until the power was out. And it was _silent_ here.

The only thing that kept the trickle of panic from growing was that he could still feel his _own_ magic, tied to his soul as it was. But he was confused. Magic was a force of nature; even the middle of nowhere was supposed to seethe with magic. Even the places that the muggles had destroyed with their bombs still swirled with it. So it didn’t make any sense that _there was none here_.

Harry inhaled shakily and turned his face farther into the itchy grass tickling his cheek, eyes still closed and body still so _weak_ , even if the crippling exhaustion seemed to have lessened. If he ignored the crawling sensation of _wrongness_ , this place was…nice. Clean. Unpolluted. The air was sweet in his lungs, untainted by smog or exhaust _(or blood and spilled potions and rot-mold-mildew)_. All he could hear was the quiet rustle of leaves, the occasional deliberate dart of an animal moving through the underbrush.

He lost track of time as he just lay there, eyes closed, breathing deeply, slowly. Winding down from the realization that he was _still alive_ , that he had lived through something that should have killed him. _Again_. The Ministry Battle, the _Veil_. The _spell_. _(It should have killed him; it did, it did.)_

With a bone deep, weary sigh, Harry braced himself and struggled to sit upright, fighting the weakness and ache that just wanted to drag him under to _sleep (no, I can’t, I can’t)_. He forced his eyes open, hoping that actual sunlight would kill the urge, and realized that something had gone _horribly_ wrong.

His gaze fell to the arm propping his body up, his right hand, curiously obscured by the tattered sleeve of the faded-gray prisoner’s robe he had been dressed in. It shouldn’t have obscured his hand—it shouldn’t have obscured his hand with _inches of material to spare_. It had fit him before, he _knew_ it had, he’d worn it for _months_.

With the first creeping tendrils of unease twisting his stomach, Harry sat properly upright enough to tug the sleeve up, exposing his hand and immediately grimacing. The scar was right, the pale pink scrawl of his own handwriting spelling out _“I must not tell lies,”_ , but the rest was _wrong_. The old scar stood out _too much_. He wasn’t supposed to be that pale, even after being away from the sun for so long—his skin wasn’t pale, now, it was _white_. Paper-white, _Voldemort_ white. But that wasn’t all. That was just the _start_.

It _wasn’t his hand_. It was too small, the fingers too long, _proportionately_ too long. The fingernails were dark, pointed, a little long, and something looked strangely _familiar_ about them, the tiny ridge running down the center of each one, but Harry’s stomach was twisting harder the longer he looked. He let the sleeve go, hiding away the spindly limb, and sluggishly realized the implications of it. His robe was too large, as were the clothes he wore under it, now that he was actually noticing the strange way the fabric was bunching under him. He had _shrunk_.

Harry groaned a little brokenly and let himself fall back onto the soft ground, heedless of the swell in pain the motion caused. Maybe he should just stay there, on the nice, soft grass, where he didn’t have to think about shrinking and wrongness and how empty the air felt without magic. Gods _above_ , couldn’t he get a break? He had just killed the worst Dark Lord to come out of Britain in _centuries_ ; did he really have to deal with this _now_?

He abruptly stilled, paranoia triggered by his own self-pitying thoughts, and realized all at once the vulnerability of his position. He was weak and lying out in the open, probably pretty close to child-sized again; even if there weren’t people around, there were animals. Did he really want to take the chance that he looked like an easy meal to something?

Standing was far harder than sitting up had been, and staying upright was just as much of a challenge as it had been at the Ministry; the new necessity of fighting a losing battle with his _own clothing_ didn’t help any. There had to be more than half a foot of excess hanging over his hands and feet that had to be rolled up to keep him from tripping, and then he had to draw his arms under his robe to tighten the drawstring on his pants just so they wouldn’t fall down. Even then, he couldn’t do much about the over-robe itself, the way the large sleeves hung far passed his fingertips and the hem pooled around his feet.

Growling, Harry managed to stumble over to lean against a nearby sapling, panting a little, silent only because he didn’t have the breath to swear as much as he wanted to. He still had _some_ measure of luck, though, because he heard the unmistakable sound of running water not too far from where he was, and it gave him enough of a reason to _keep moving_. He hadn’t realized how dry his throat was.

Turning away from the direction the sun was shining from, Harry was just able to spot the glimmer of moving water through the bushes, and with a goal in sight he went with single-minded focus. It was just as he broke through the first bit of undergrowth that a hare darted out in front of him, head on, nearly sending him to his ass when he gave a startled jerk back. The mammal’s head came up, little black eyes meeting his as its body twisted, changing direction and—

It dropped dead, flopping over with thwarted momentum, nearly rolling right into his robe-covered feet.

Inanely, Harry’s first thought was a weak protest that _(“Hey, I’m not that ugly”)_ , followed by a more poisonous _(“Are you **sure**?”)_ , but he shook off both as he stared down at the bundle of brown fur with something like horrified amusement. Because _what the bloody hell was that about_?

Harry sighed and shook his head a little; he just wanted to get to the _water_. Still, he paused and bent down to grab the hare by its sharp-clawed little paw—couldn’t help swinging it a little, like a parody of a child’s stuffed animal, couldn’t help the amusement that spiked sharply through his head. It was _practical_ , though; it was something he could eat, and it had just…fallen into his lap. He didn’t exactly _feel_ hungry, but…he didn’t actually know the last time he had eaten solid food was, either. He needed to start somewhere _(he needed his strength)_.

The source of the sound turned out to be little more than a creek; a ribbon of water only a couple feet across and bare inches deep, running over a bed of smooth rocks. Harry knew very little about moving water sources, due to lack of exposure, but from just how _wide_ the furrow carved into the surrounding land was, how far back the trees grew, he suspected a drought was the cause of the water level. More good luck; he probably wasn’t strong enough to deal with the force of a moving current.

Gingerly walking across the shifting rocks, Harry made his way to the water, dropping the rabbit beside the place he intended to sit. It made a strange, wet thump when it fell, and it dragged an odd little giggle out of his mouth. Harry clamped his lips shut, startled, not _quite_ sure why he would find the noise funny, before letting it go, shunting the thought to the side as unimportant. It felt good to laugh, anyway. Even at _that_. It felt even better to _sit_ again, though, even if he had to be careful just to keep any of his many aches from getting worse.

Slowly, he leaned forward to bring his head close to the water, hair sliding limply over his cheeks, and sighed in relief at the first cool touch of liquid on his lips. It was undignified, hands braced on the stones to keep himself from tipping completely forward, nose dipping in as well as he greedily drank his fill—it wasn’t the worst thing he had done. He’d also drunk from dirtier sources living with the Dursleys. It sat heavily in his stomach, almost enough to spark nausea, but it was _good_.

The shallow, wavering surface of the water didn’t reflect well, but as Harry pushed himself upright again he caught a flash of…something. Something that made him want a better look, a clearer picture. He cast his eyes to the tiny pebbles all around him, the way some of them had shiny flecks spattering their exterior, and scooped up a generous handful; it took only a moment’s concentration for them to melt together, transfiguring into a small, flat mirror. He tipped the glass until he caught his own reflection.

…

Harry stared into the mirror, shocked into stark blankness. Somehow he doubted anyone in the Wizarding World would recognize him, now.

He hadn’t just shrunk, it would seem. He _looked_ younger, barely even a teenager, and that wasn’t even fair because he was _eighteen_ , he was an _adult_ , not—

But that wasn’t why no one would recognize him. Harry didn’t look very much like himself. The structure of his face was thinner, sharper, his cheekbones more pronounced, and it had very little to do with him looking like a famine victim. With a horrified sort of fascination, Harry realized that he actually looked something like Voldemort after his rebirth, and then he had to wonder if that was _his fault_. It was a pretty dark piece of magic, to steal another’s…and he had stolen the _Dark Lord’s_ magic, from a body that had been borne from a spell, another _dark magic ritual_.

His hands were bizarrely steady when he tilted the mirror to study the details of his new face. Well. At least he still had a nose, which was much better than the slits for nostrils that Voldemort had. No matter how fond of snakes Harry had become, even he had to admit that that trait on a humanoid face was _horrifically creepy_. He still had his hair, too, even if it wasn’t _exactly his_ ; it was still black, but it was dull and lank where it hung around his face, straight in a way that it had never been before. And his eyes weren’t red—

They weren’t red, because they were _yellow_. Basilisk eyes. The hare’s sudden death made a lot more sense, now. Harry brought the mirror closer to his face, a slight shiver going down his back as he focused on his eyes—as the slit pupils widened and narrowed with his focus. He couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the sclera begun; everything but the pupils were completely, vividly, _toxically_ yellow. The effect they had, sitting in the bruised-deep shadows around his eyes, the paper-white skin of his face, was viscerally _inhuman_.

Exhaling a little hopelessly, Harry set the mirror down and pulled his arms in close, shifting into his animagus form between blinks. He reveled in the ability to change again, though he’d only been able to a couple times since gaining the ability, while still at Hogwarts. Even before he’d completely reared up on the sun-warmed stones, Harry could tell that he wasn’t quite right in this form, either; he twisted around to look down his own back, and it was easy to tell that he had shrunk down to maybe half his previous size, much closer to thirty feet than sixty. When he flared it, he could tell that the crest of black feather-like scales on his head wasn’t as full, either, less like a mane than it had been.

His tail came down on the mirror with a muffled crunch, and Harry hissed out a wordless sound of aggravation, forked tongue tasting the air as his eyes scanned the flora on the opposite side of the creek. An apparent de-aging wasn’t something he particularly wanted to have to deal with when he was lost in some place that was void of magic, especially with his change of appearance to work around, as well… It still wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened from surviving certain death. A shiver went down the entire length of his spine at the thought of Voldemort’s condition; trapped as something less than a ghost for _thirteen years_ —

Harry shook his head, then turned to stare down at the now comparatively small form of the dead hare beside him. He still didn’t feel hunger, even though every time he tasted the air he caught an edge of mammalian musk, a scent that was automatically associated with _food_. Which was a little strange, for _how strange it didn’t feel_. But it wasn’t as if he’d never eaten raw meat before, either. No, the current conundrum was if he _should_ eat it in this form; he wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to shift back into his human form before it was completely digested, if his magic would compensate for it or if he would inadvertently rupture his stomach trying. It didn’t sound like something he wanted to test.

Harry compressed himself back down into his human shape –he caught a flash of yellow in the scattered mirror shards–, well, _mostly_ human shape. He’d held half a hope that the shift would reverse the snakelike traits, but. He sighed and rubbed his sleeve-shrouded palm over his eyes. It wasn’t _too_ bad. It would be hard to blend in, but he’d…have to think of something.

His attention drifted sharply back to the slowly cooling corpse by his side, the scent of it just as appealing as it had been a couple minutes ago—Harry halted that train of thought, staring down at the hare with narrowing yellow eyes. _He could still smell it?_

A sharp wave of his hand had the broken shards of his transfiguration flying together, melding smoothly back into the mirror that came to float before his face. He opened his mouth, and glared at the sight revealed, supremely unimpressed. Having to hide his eyes, _and_ this, was going to be more trouble than it was probably worth.

His tongue was thin, and forked, and very starkly _black_. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the matter of his _teeth_. Which were all now long, and thin, and _sharp_ ; they weren’t teeth, they were _fangs_. His – _double set_ of– canines were even more pronounced than the rest, and Harry didn’t even have to wonder if he was venomous now, too. Of course he was. Why _wouldn’t_ he be? It shouldn’t have been possible for him to feel disappointed about anything at this point—he _had_ just fulfilled a life or death prophecy _and_ survived a trip through the Veil of Death. He was getting there, though. This was ridiculous. Voldemort had _nothing_ on him.

Harry bared his newly-scary set of fangs at the mirror in what could have once been a friendly grin. He looked like something out of a fairy-tale nightmare, something that would come in the night and eat your children. Unbidden, a strange, cracked giggle crawled out of his throat as he let the mirror fall, and once it started, it didn’t _stop_. It went on and on, too high and too young, until his stomach hurt and his eyes watered, and Harry didn’t even know _why_ he was laughing but it felt _good_.

Eventually the hysteria faded enough for him to focus on his food again, shifting a little on the rocks as he grabbed it by the ear and dragged it almost into his lap. He fidgeted with the material hiding his hands enough to be able to prod the soft fur with a single, sharp fingertip. He might’ve been able to puncture the hide with these sharp claws if he had any of his old strength, but, alas. Harry tilted his head a little and then drew that same fingertip down the silky line of its spine, skin splitting behind it from the precisely controlled cutting curse. From there it was easy to pull the hare closer, dig his fingertips into the slick cut and loosen the skin from the deep red flesh beneath, the fur under his palms clumping together with dead blood.

Harry could never remember being _squeamish_ about anything, but any unease he might’ve had about blood was quickly left behind in sixth year, even before the ritual. He _had_ used live targets for some of the darker spells he was learning, and besides that… Every time he slept, he had been in Voldemort’s head. Seeing and _performing_ the darkest of torture spells every time he slept—it would have desensitized even the most softhearted after a while. Or completely broken them. Skinning a dead animal had _nothing_ on slowly, deliberately, skinning a four year old child.

Harry frowned and tilted his head farther down, hands stilling. Well. That thought hadn’t bothered him as much as it used to. That was…possibly concerning. _(“Oh no!” he mocked internally. “It’s like they all said, you’re going dark!”)_ He choked down another giggle, and the skin under his hands tore away from the flesh below with a long _riiiip_.

He almost felt it this time, when his tongue flicked out just passed his lips to taste the air, but this time the scent stirred a real response in him. The heavy copper smell of blood made his stomach burn, made it twist in the almost alien sensation of _hunger_ , unlike what he could remember feeling in… _(what? how long?)_ The suddenness of the sensation was startling and painful, and Harry curled over on himself with a grimace. His mouth was hot, suddenly flooded with saliva, and he had to swallow back bitter bile.

He _needed_ to eat.

Unthinkingly, he dug his fingernails deep into the firm flesh of the hare and _ripped_ , dragging his hand down and he didn’t even _care_ if it was his magic acting on his need or his actual nails that cut the meat, just that it _cut_. It didn’t look particularly appetizing, as he tugged a long, stringy strip away from the spine, but Harry had honestly eaten worse while living with his ‘family’, and it smelled almost _divine (if only it was still warm…)_

He slipped the piece into his mouth and nearly moaned in relief, the reflex to chew entirely absent, and he swallowed it whole almost before he even tasted the slickness of the iron-blood-tang. The second piece, he gave an experimental chew on, and it shredded into ribbons under the slightest pressure of his fangs. He almost giggled again, he even might have, but he was too focused on pulling another piece off of the small mammal to care. Distantly, Harry was grateful that the taste wasn’t repulsive; it would have all been much harder to survive if he’d gagged on a convenient food source. How embarrassing, to die of starvation of all things, after what he’d managed to live through.

Too quickly though, his body protested the handful of flesh he’d managed to swallow; it had been too long since he’d ingested anything solid, he’d eaten what he _had_ too quickly. Harry choked and queasily swallowed down the lump that tried to rise, less-bloody hand pressed gently to his hollow stomach as he grimaced, swallowed again to make sure it _stayed_ down. That…was annoying. He was still _hungry_ , but he was _full_.

Harry sighed and pushed the hare back onto the stones of the riverbed, trying to remove the temptation to continue eating. He shifted where he sat, uncomfortable again now that he wasn’t distracted by _food_ , and absently dragged a tacky-wet fingertip over his lips. The sun was behind him, but still high; it was maybe mid-afternoon, and warm, almost hot. The grass was long, the trees young and thin, nothing like the Forbidden Forest, and the world around him was painfully, echoingly, empty of magic.

Harry needed a plan. He needed to think, as he hadn’t done in months. His mind was surprisingly quick on the uptake.

He needed to find out where he was, which meant he needed to find _people_.

Obviously, that was a problem. First, as demonstrated by his unlucky lunch, his gaze was now _deadly_ , and walking around with his eyes closed just to keep from _accidentally killing people_ was out of the question. Second, but obviously related, was that he didn’t look very much like a _person_ so much as a creature of some sort. The second problem was a little easier to fix, but there was no good solution. A glamour was the first, obvious, solution, and it _could_ work, but it had its drawbacks. A glamour of the magnitude needed to even change the color of his skin would unravel if he so much as dropped into deep meditation, would completely blow away if he went unconscious. And then there was the fact that sometimes they could be undone solely through high-stress; dropping a glamour in front of a muggle was even worse than having a strange appearance, because it implied that you had the power to _change_ your appearance. That you had some sort of power at all. Dropping it because he got _angry_ in front of a muggle..?

Harry shunted the idea of illusions off to the side and changed tracks, eyes vacantly turned to the sky, a finger absently painting his lip red, red, red.

Transfiguration held more promise for a disguise, but also posed more of a risk to himself. Human transfiguration was _difficult_ , even with a wand to aid in the precision, and _(was he still human—what effect would that have?)_ was something that required extensive testing before he would willingly try it on something like his eyes, for instance. One wrong move and he could permanently blind himself, no matter how familiar he now was with the theory. That, as a solution, also had to be set aside, because he didn’t want to spend time on it –possibly _months_ – when he could be _(“Unlikely,” he hissed)_ not far from home, after all, maybe just in a strange warded zone.

No, maybe his appearance wasn’t what he had to concern himself with; it did sound like a paltry problem compared to the possibility of killing (or petrifying) anyone and anything that met his eyes.

Harry sighed softly, tongue swiping absently at the traces of blood on his lips, and absently blanketed the mauled-looking remains of his lunch in a charm to keep the meat from spoiling. No sense in wasting it. He cast his eyes around again, looking for inspiration, and frowned a little at his small mirror, abandoned on the rocks; from even the slight distance, all he caught in its reflection was a flash of yellow.

Maybe…maybe he was just thinking about it too hard? Harry flicked his hand and the glass reverted back into a handful of pebbles. All he needed was his eyes obscured; so long as no one could _see_ them, there wasn’t any danger of anyone accidentally dropping dead. He just needed to cover them, something that couldn’t be seen around—it couldn’t just be the hood attached to the back of his robe pulled down over his face, though that might help hide his features.

…his _robe_.

Harry shuffled a little awkwardly where he sat, crossing his legs up inside the robe and tugging the hem out at the bottom; it wasn’t as if he didn’t now have inches to spare off of the end, and would probably only help him if he shortened it up, anyway. The dark gray material had been coarse at one point, but it was soft with wear and tore easily under the application of sharp nails, until Harry was left holding a long ribbon of fabric. A blindfold. Before he even tried it, Harry let the fabric drift in the creek for a while, letting most of the accumulated… _grime_ …drift away. Getting his trailing sleeves wet and not even caring, Harry wrung the material out between his hands and then held it over his eyes experimentally. Worn as the fabric was, it still left him practically blind.

Harry scowled for a long minute before he scoffed and rolled his eyes, almost wanting to hit himself for being stupid. Was he a wizard or not? He tied the damp cloth over his eyes, wrinkling his nose a little at the sensation, and knotted it at the back of his head, loosely tucking the trailing ends into the hood. It took barely any effort to weave his magic through the blindfold, casting a charm used for spying that turned the fabric see-through—but only one way. His sight was suddenly clear again, though he could feel it when his eyelashes brushed the fabric with every blink; he was satisfied that this way, _no one_ could see his eyes, even if they tried.

With his most immediate concerns taken care of, Harry once more became aware of how much sitting on the rocks _hurt_ , and made himself stand. Thankfully, he actually had the energy to do so, but his body was beginning to thrum with a burning sort of ache; it felt as if he’d run himself straight past tired and into _exhausted_. Swaying wearily on his feet, Harry turned his head towards the tangled vines on the opposite side of the creek, already knowing that he had no intent to backtrack.

Frowning bitterly at the fine trembling in his limbs, Harry levitated the hare into the air, so that it would trail after him; he knew on a level that was deeper than thought that doing so would put far less strain on his magic than it would his body. _(It wasn’t his **magic** that was weak.)_ Pessimistically grateful that the water wasn’t deeper, Harry still took a handful of his robe to hike it up when he sloshed through the couple of inches of water towards the opposite bank, shivering when the cold leeched up the material of his pants, and oh, _lovely_ , his toenails were just as dark and sharp as his fingernails. The only sounds as he finally fought his way through the unexpectedly thick tangle of thorny vines were his own; the rustle of disturbed greenery and his panting gasps as he struggled not to just _fall_. Darkly, he almost wished Voldemort were alive again, just so Harry could kill him _slower_ for wrecking his body so much worse than the Dursleys ever had.

Not nearly as far from the creek as he’d hoped to get, Harry collapsed into the soft grass, near the base of one of the largest trees he’d yet encountered—still not very tall. An ugly snarl twisted his face as his muscles screamed, tight agony warring with the burn of exhaustion. He cancelled the levitation spell and the mangled carcass of the rabbit fell next to him with a thump, a wet patter as cool blood spattered across knees, the specks barely visible against the dark gray fabric. He slumped down until he was once more lying on his side, a mirror to how he’d awoken, surrounded by nature and stark _emptiness_.

He felt _weak_. It was almost as infuriating as it was worrisome.

Lying quietly in the grass, exhausted and not feeling any less so for stopping, Harry realized with some dread that he would have to do something that he hadn’t done willingly in almost two years. He would have to sleep. He hadn’t _willingly_ done so since the Department of Mysteries, the _(“First,”)_ possession. Whenever the fatigue dragging at his body had become too much to ignore any longer, Harry would meditate – _(the first step in learning to fortify the mind with Occlumency, but no matter how often he did it, how hard he tried, the shields never took)_ – to rest his body and mind, but it never rejuvenated how sleep was supposed to. But for him, sleep was worse; sleep meant a trip to Voldemort’s mind, and if anything that was _less_ restful than going without.

More often, Harry would have to bear witness to the visions anyway, because during his frantic training in the Room, he’d never had the _time_ to be still and clear his mind; all too frequently, he would just suddenly pass out in the middle of casting a new spell, the additional strain just a little too much. And then, with Voldemort… well, Harry wasn’t a stranger to being Stunned unconscious, anymore.

His experiences with sleep were _bad_. Even the thought of trying made him feel cold, somewhere deep in his chest. It might’ve been the start of an actual _phobia_.

The cold didn’t even have the time to spread outwards. Before Harry could even begin the laborious task of pushing himself upright to take a meditative pose, his magic hitched and surged inwards, his vision blacking out at the edges—

Pained, hitching sobs and furious, wordless hisses were the sounds that slowly dragged Harry into blurred consciousness. He wondered, in a vague, distant way, who had pissed Voldemort off this time, to make him sic Nagini on them. He didn’t _let himself_ wonder why he was lying down, why the Dark Lord had put him atop something soft, because if he thought about it… He couldn’t help the tickling thought pressing on him, though, of why it was brighter than usual behind his closed eyes, why the air was warm and fresh.

The sobs choked off into pained whimpering –pity was far beyond Harry’s ability to feel, anymore– but the hissing stopped, and his thoughts stirred away from peaceful blankness as he _wondered_. The snake had sounded so _angry_ , and now that he’d paused to think, that voice hadn’t really sounded like Nagini; it sounded like someone much smaller, and most of the snakes that Voldemort conjured were almost disturbingly silent as they bit.

And then his tongue flicked out, almost like a reflex, like blinking, and he was bombarded with a wave of new and interesting scents, and he remembered that he was _free_. But…if he was free, if Voldemort was dead, then why was there the scent of pain, distress, _dying-human-male_ , clashing with potent venom and angry snake?

Well, he wouldn’t know if he didn’t see for himself, would he?

Harry pushed himself upright, face unerringly turned to the source of the commotion before he even blinked his eyes open, taking in the scene that greeted him in the gray pre-dawn. There, less than ten feet from where he’d slept – _he’d **slept**?!– _ was a man, choking and convulsing in the longish grass, and closer, a knife, apparently dropped when the man had fallen. What truly caught his attention, however, was the strange little snake coiled between he and the dying man; it shimmered red-orange like fire, thin like a ribbon in the yellow-green grass, and was gazing up at Harry with what might’ve been surprise.

Its scales shimmered attractively when it slithered closer to him, only increasing its resemblance to a line of living flame, and Harry had never heard of a snake like this before (and he had become so very familiar with the many, many breeds of snakes while he sat at Voldemort’s feet). It came to rest in the loose folds of his robe, weightless against his knees, head low and unthreatening as its bright red tongue flickered out, tasting him. Harry leaned closer to the serpent and scented the air in turn, a little bemused at how natural the motion came; it smelled of a subtle musk that slotted neatly into “snake” in his head, and a bitter tang that had to be venom. _Strong_ venom.

“Lord Snake?” the unusual little serpent hissed, and Harry was _amused_ , pale lips curling up at the edges. The basilisk was called the King of Serpents, but Harry had always assumed that it was a name given by wizards; was that wrong? Was it just a translation given by a Parselmouth?

“My name is Harry, pretty one,” Harry corrected, nearly purring. Snakes were always more agreeable after a compliment, but the endearment had slipped out naturally, because it was _true_. It was a very pretty little snake, with lustrous orange eyes and large, round pupils, a narrow, arrow-shaped head.

“Lord Harry,” it hissed in turn, and Harry rolled his eyes in fond amusement—stubborn. “Are you well?” For an obviously nonmagical snake, it sounded surprisingly concerned. Then it flicked its tongue at him again, and the implication was suddenly obvious; it could smell his weakness. It felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a bludger, and Harry had to take a deep breath before he could reply.

“I will recover, in time,” Harry placated, because he knew he _wasn’t_ well, and while it may have been a little bit of a lie – _(“You don’t **really** know,”)_ – it wasn’t the most blatant one he could have told. There was something he was curious about, though. “Why is there a human dying over there?”

“I bit him,” the snake on his lap said bluntly, a hint of its previous fury creeping back in, the way its draped body coiled up tighter. “He will be dead soon,” its arrow-shaped head turned to the fallen man, and Harry lifted his eyes to watch the way the man –whimpering, again– writhed weakly, attempting to move away. The little snake seemed confident in its declaration, proud even.

Harry’s gaze fell back to the long, wickedly sharp knife half-hidden in the grass, how close it was to him, and his expression flattened out. _(“ **No**.”)_

Without even really thinking about it, Harry inched his fingers out of his sleeve and stroked them over the cool, smooth body of the fire-patterned serpent, smiling a little when it hissed wordlessly and pushed into his touch. “Thank you for protecting me then, little friend. You being here when you were was quite fortuitous.” It hadn’t quite escaped his notice that it was just barely dawn, the air damp and the grass covered in dew; when last he remembered it couldn’t have been far passed midday. He had to have been asleep, but it hadn’t felt like it. Or maybe Harry just couldn’t recognize sleep any longer without visions haunting him.

His protector visibly preened, puffing up and showing off the streaks of lighter orange in the deeper red. Harry smiled at it fondly, scratching a sharp nail around the hinge of its jaw, but even the sincerity of the emotion couldn’t keep the expression on his face for long; it felt strange, unpracticed. It didn’t protest when he scooped it up with both hands –sinuous body almost weightless, but for the strength of its coils against his palms– and settled it onto his shoulder, where it slithered around until it was nearly lost in the folds of his hood. After that, he used the support of the nearby tree to stand, and it was somewhat easier than it had been before, even if his muscles still ached with familiar overexertion.

His gait was almost uncannily smooth when he stepped towards the man, and Harry reflected again on the great and terrible swings of his luck. Of course _he_ would have someone sneak up on him like that, when he was so defenseless… Of course he would have a venomous snake appear from nowhere to defend him. He negligently banished the knife farther away, back towards the direction he’d come from, and stared down at the man for a moment before deciding the risk was low enough, kneeling beside him. Mind in a state of familiar, blank apathy, Harry tapped the man’s sweaty forehead with the back of a knuckle, head tilted as he waited for pain-glazed eyes to open.

Deep brown eyes did so hazily, locking for a moment onto his face before drifting away, down to his shoulder and the vibrantly bright head of the serpent peeking out of his robe. The man jerked, but this time it wasn’t a convulsion so much as another attempt to move away, his jaw clenched tightly before cracking open and—

They dying man choked out a scream laced with what were undeniably words, but in a language that Harry had never heard before.

Something dangerously close to spiteful fury burned through him, smothered down quickly enough that he barely noticed. Well. That was just _wonderful_. If he couldn’t even _understand_ the people around him…

With the new thought in mind, Harry looked more closely at his protector’s victim, this time noticing the broader facial features, darker skin-tone, and coarser, more functional than attractive clothes. Different features were one thing, but the _clothing_ ; the man wasn’t dressed like any muggle or wizard he had ever seen before. Harry frowned and leaned in closer –completely ignoring the man’s renewed struggles and unintelligible mutters–, tasting the air around him. _Pain_ was a new and interesting smell-taste, one that made something in the back of his head _(basilisk thoughts?)_ sharpen, and _fear_ was almost acrid, though, and made whatever it was sit up and take notice.

Under that was what Harry had been questing for—decay. The man’s body was rotting, breaking down around him. It was too late for him; this man would die, regardless of what Harry did to him. That was all he needed to know, because now there weren’t any consequences in the attempt.

“Do not look at my eyes, pretty,” Harry hissed, briefly blanketing the serpent with his trailing sleeve, not moving again until he heard a quietly affirming hiss and felt it slide into the hood completely, settling against the back of his neck. Then he half-stood –utilizing the smallest amount of magical pressure to force the mildly-convulsing man fully onto his back– and straddled his chest, at the same time pinning thickly-muscled, venom-weakened arms with his knees. The dying man was gasping weakly, eyes squeezed shut and face turned away from Harry.

Harry reached up to his own face and gently tugged the blindfold down.

Thumb and index fingers lightly resting against the sweat-glazed, taut skin of the man’s upper and lower eyelids, Harry twisted his magic with intent, almost feeling the pressure of the power gathering behind his own eyes. He’d never done it before, but it needed to happen quickly… And the man wouldn’t last much longer, anyway, not if the wet sound of his breathing meant anything. Almost before he’d even pried the tightly-closed eyelids open, Harry murmured _“Legilimens,”_ and felt the jolt of entering his victim’s mind, almost the same way he felt the body beneath him stiffen in the shock of instant death.

_—It’s almost dawn, and he’s nearing the end of his traps, but he needs to check them all before anything gets to them and ruins the fur. It’s been a scarce year, but he has enough prepared furs to make it worth it to sell at the market in a few days. The village is only a day’s easy travel east…_

_A small glade between his fifth and sixth traps –empty– and he sees a dark lump crumpled near the base of a tree. A body, little more than a child, and one of the most deadly snakes in the entirety of Grass country still nearby, coiled as if poised to strike again. He cautiously draws his knife from its sheath, wary, but it would be wrong if he left without even **checking** who it could be, who he has to tell that their child—the moment he steps forward the scaled beast whips around, fast as wildfire, and **pain** , once, twice, thrice, his ankles punctured before he could consider running._

_Hissing, two tones, one soft and the other only slightly less so, the child-figure sitting up, leaning over towards the snake…_

_A quick, fleeting pressure on his forehead, faintly cold, just enough to briefly break him from the burning agony of his own blood. The blinded corpse-child, kneeling beside him, the fire-bright head of the serpent disappearing into his clothing; he smells like mildew and damp places. Blood. A forked black tongue flicks out passed pale lips, flecked with the peeling rust of dried blood; hissing. **Demon**._

_An intangible pressure forces his back firmly into the earth, and then a light weight settles on his chest, pressing out the last of the air from his filling lungs._

_Cold, icy-cold fingertips frame his eyes, the prick of sharp claws as they’re forced open._

_Vivid yellow, the brightest he’s ever seen, the predatory cast of them set within dark, purple-black markings. **Demon** —_

Harry jerked back, his head snapping to the side as he fought the disorientation of returning from the blackness of a dead mind. Slowly, his gaze slid back to the corpse’s face, the eyes glazing over, features slackened and smoothed from the agony of the serpent’s venom. Foolish. The man had risked himself recklessly for no reason, for someone he didn’t even _know_. Why would he _do_ that?

Harry pulled his blindfold back over his eyes –and that was a _yes_ on if they were unilaterally lethal– and checked the knot that held it in place before he rose from his seat on the corpse. “It is safe to come out again, pretty one,” Harry hissed pleasantly, moving back towards where he’d slept. “Thank you for protecting me.” Even if there had been no threat to him, just to the snake itself… It felt… _nice_ to have someone willing to kill to keep him safe.

Absently rubbing a phantom pain over his heart as he settled down into the thick grass, Harry reflected on his unusual experience with his first attempt at Legilimency. It felt almost as if he had used it before, but Harry knew for a fact that he _hadn’t_. There were few things that the Room could not provide for him, and a second person to test himself against was one of them. That branch of the Mind Arts _required_ a target mind to rifle through, it _could not_ be practiced in more than theory while working alone. It appeared, though, that in direct contrast with his abysmal Occlumency skills, he was a natural Legilimens. If he’d had just a few seconds longer –or he had known ahead of time that he had the skill for it– Harry might have been able take what he had actually been searching for; knowledge of the language the man spoke.

He couldn’t be _too_ disappointed, however; he now knew the location of the closest pocket of civilization, and he already had another method to quickly learn a language. It was probably for the best that he hadn’t known of his skill in mind-reading beforehand—that he likely wouldn’t have had any trouble working around the added difficulty that was something –his blindfold– blocking _true_ eye contact. If he would have known that, he probably would have attempted to keep the fur-trapper alive by not exposing him to the Basilisk’s Gaze, taking the entirety of his language and probably giving himself a strange verbal tic while he was at it.

Harry was a little unsure about his apparent proficiency with Legilimency, because it hadn’t been apparent the entire time he’d been training and the _one_ time he’d tried it was so _easy_. But. He was also undeniably pleased. It wasn’t a common skill, tellingly, by the fact that he knew of only three wizards that _could_ : Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, and Tom Marvolo Riddle himself. If properly harnessed, he would be able to tell a lie at a glance, just by meeting someone’s eyes. _No one would ever be able to lie to him again_. And _that_ was why he was pleased, why he was as close to _overjoyed_ as he could be. He was so _tired_ of lies.

Harry shook his head, dismissing the thought, and leaned back against the smooth bark of the tree, feeling the slight movement of his companion within the fabric of his robe. A soft breath left him when its cool head touched the bare, thin skin of his throat, but he felt no fear, even after witnessing the effects of its bite firsthand. It wouldn’t bite him. Besides that, there was something, some… _instinct_ , that told him that he had little to fear from the venom; nothing to fear from the snake itself. As seemed to be a new constant, Harry didn’t know _why_ he felt – _knew_ – this, but it was easy to trust.

Casting one last glance at the body only a dozen feet from himself, Harry reached up to stroke his fingertips once more over the silky scales of the snake halfway wrapped around his throat. The tickle of its tongue on his skin almost made him smile, and he turned his eyes peaceably towards the sky, just going golden. The instincts were a little different from what they used to be, but he wouldn’t worry about it, not so long as his intuition held true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, guys, it _hurts_ me, looking back and seeing how I used to write. But, yay! I actually really like how this one turned out. What do you think?


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